


Cleanse

by last_illusions (injured_eternity)



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-08
Updated: 2009-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injured_eternity/pseuds/last_illusions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He dreams he's drowning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cleanse

He dreams he’s drowning. He dreams he’s drowning, and he can never break the surface. Sometimes there’s a hand reaching for him, but even then it’s just milimetres out of range.

For him, the dream is a byproduct of stress—always has been. The ironic thing is he’s never been in danger of drowning; no car crashes into ominous bodies of water, no traumatic falls into pools as a child. It’s always a week: once it starts, it lasts just seven days, independent of the stressor, and then it stops. What should scare him is the fact that the prospect of drowning does not; he remains fully aware as he loses air, as the weightlessness becomes strangely oppressive, but there’s never any panic. It makes him wonder what he’d do if he ever actually faced drowning. He does, however, wake in a cold sweat without fail, and the incongruity of these reactions does not escape him even if he’s not sure if it’s the drowning or his own lack of reaction that throws him.

Haley never noticed; he doesn’t know if it’s because he hid it too well or because it didn’t matter (it occurs to him that there’s a lot he doesn’t know about himself). In the aftermath of his divorce, there’s a perverse part of him that wants to believe the latter. If he goes into work looking a little worse for wear, he can blame it on stress without lying.

Then they have an unsub who’s drowning children in Lake Ontario, and they haven’t a shred of evidence. His team comes up with their profile, as usual: white male, early-to-mid-thirties, organised, steady job—one that makes his presence in households viable. When they catch him, he’s in the middle of drowning his sixth victim, and it’s Hotch who beats Morgan to stripping off his coat and diving into the freezing water after the little girl. He nearly kills himself trying to save her, but save her he does, and he even lets Dave yell at him about risking his life.

It's not until he wakes up the next morning that he realises the dreams stopped—three days early.

  
 _Finis._

 _Feedback is always appreciated_.


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